Rod Johns was a true pioneer of indie films, never wavering in his zest for creativity. from his projects in the NZ 48 hour film festival, Stella 459, and Ghost Bride Rod was an innovator, rest in peace buddy, your legacy will be remembered for eternity----Rod Chats about Film creation in New Zealand.
The New Zealand film industry grew from
small very modest beginnings and there are good and bad points about
this.
The early mainstream industry was government funded,
which was essential to establishing the flourishing film industry and
high budget productions being made in New Zealand today; but even
then there was an embryo indie/guerrilla scene happening with a few
keen filmmakers like Roger Donaldson, Geoff Murphy, and Peter Jackson
running around with cameras shooting their actor friends.
This
produced the can-do low budget film-making ethos which New Zealand
filmmakers are famous for and I believe are amongst world leaders in;
but as the mainstream industry developed the small pool of production
companies/producers also came with baggage.
A funding
merry-go-round was created with producer A getting the funding brass
ring this time, producer B the next, C the next, and so on.
I
think a lot of producers got locked into government funding as the
sole way of financing films because of this; which also severely
limited the type and range of films (and Television) we could make in
New Zealand.
When the New Zealand Film Commission
funded their first film (David Blyth’s first feature, Angel Mine)
for the princely sum of NZ $19,000 the controversy it caused almost
brought down the fledgling Government film funding body.
I think
a lot of industry people got spooked by this and were running scared:
Terrified of having the PC finger pointed at them if they attempted
to make anything edgy and controversial; a fear of making anything
un-PC that seems to have carried over right into the present day.
This combination of reliance on
government funding, and fear of the PC lobby, severely inhibited New
Zealand filmmakers which unfortunately started with writers’
self-censorship: Writers thinking I can’t write that it would never
get funded/made.
There was a period where the
industry looked like breaking free of these constrictions with dark
and edgy films like Vincent Ward’s ‘Vigil’ – still one of my
favourite New Zealand films – and Michael Firth’s ‘Heart of the
Stag’ but then someone seemed to decide New Zealand films were
quirky/cutesy and safe and...
Oh well! Probably an era of New
Zealand filmmaking I’d rather forget.
I pitched something
edgy to a producer and the first response wasn’t that’s great, or
crap, but: I don’t think we could get the Film Commission (the
government funding body) to fund that.
I asked if that was the
only place he looked for funding and he looked at me as though I was
deranged.
I think he was totally convinced he was talking to a nut
job when I asked didn’t he look offshore for funding? He had
obviously never had to explore this possibility.
Which brings
us back to the thriving indie New Zealand film industry.
With
so many filmmakers wanting to make films - and the small government
funding pool seeming to be totally dominated by big fish production
companies and an even smaller pool of ‘Stars’ - even though
filmmakers are well used to and hardened to rejection (and if you
aren’t you had better get out of the industry fast or it will
destroy you) a lot of aspiring filmmakers have simply given up on
even applying for government funding.
They (thanks to the wonders
and low cost of digital filmmaking) have reverted to the
indie/guerrilla filmmaking ethos that made New Zealand filmmaking
what it is today and, like the aforementioned Roger Donaldson, Geoff
Murphy, Peter Jackson, etc. are just getting together a bunch of
friends who are passionate about film and getting out there and doing
it.
Chat about freedom
Today’s indie/guerrilla filmmakers don’t have the
guerrilla freedom and leeway that some of the early filmmakers did of
course: The late-great actor and wildman Bruno Lawrence once told me
they needed an explosion in a film so they just went out before dawn,
set it up, set the explosion off and shot it, then threw their gear
into the cars and buggered off before anyone came to arrest
them.
Production values do, by low budget constrictions,
suffer on some indie productions but as David Blyth once told me the
object isn’t to make a perfect film (although this would be the
ideal) but to make ‘A Film’ and tell a story.
A similar thing
was expressed by Kiwi sound guru Ande Schurr in one of his blogs
where he said he suddenly realised on a shoot he wasn’t able to get
‘perfect’ sound in every take.
Within the constrictions of a
low budget you can’t do that 27th take to get a slightly
better performance, lighting, camera movement, or sound; you have to
go with the best you can achieve within the constraints of the budget
at the time.
The object is to make a film; not half a perfect film
– if such a thing as a ‘perfect film’ even exists.
